


cause wherever you are is home

by ptrprkrs



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, Skating, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptrprkrs/pseuds/ptrprkrs
Summary: what happened when max and lucas went home together insuzie, do you copy?
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	cause wherever you are is home

**Author's Note:**

> title from ‘home’ by catie turner

This is not how Max wanted to be spending her Saturday afternoon. 

She’d rather be getting ice cream with Lucas, playing video games with Lucas, _doing anything else with Lucas_. Yet, here she was, at the top of this hill, assembling a dumb machine to contact a girl that probably doesn’t exist. 

But, Lucas is with her so it’s not all bad. (Which she _never_ said if he asks, okay?) 

It’s not all boring, she’ll admit. Despite him annoying her, Lucas does make the entire ordeal more enjoyable for her and Will is actually fun to hang around with when he’s not whining about playing D&D. 

At one point, they get Dustin to forget about his walkie-talkie and teach them all the dumb war cries he learnt at Camp Know Where.

She doesn’t bother to hide her accusatory look when Will asks where the water was. 

By the time the sun had gone down, Max started to get more than a little cranky. They had moved to lie down, with Lucas and her both using his backpack as a headrest. “Dustin, come on!” she snaps exasperatedly, after the boy in question continued to try and reach Suzie. “She’s not there.”

Lucas, who seems to be as fed up as she is, exclaims, “Suzie doesn’t exist! No girl is that perfect.”

Max sits up at that and turns to Lucas with a raised eyebrow. “Is that so?” She watches as he sputters nonsense trying to backpedal and correct his blunder. It amuses her, and Max won’t deny that she enjoys making Lucas squirm. “Relax I’m just teasing. I’m obviously perfect, and _Dustin_ is obviously _lying_.”

She stands up and dusts herself off. The redhead holds her hand out for Lucas, which he grabs and pulls himself up. As they’re walking down the hill, she hears Will call out after them. “Where are you going?”

“Home!” Max yells back without missing a beat. There’s a small, lazy smile on Lucas’ face that she doesn’t notice. She feels a tug on her arm and slows down to find that Lucas has stopped walking. 

He has a mischievous grin on his face. “Race you the rest of the way?”

A smirk works its way onto Max’s face. “You’re on.” 

She doesn’t give him time to react, just releases his hand and sprints down the hill. She can vaguely hear his indignant cries about how she’s cheating as he tries to catch up to her. Max lets out a hearty laugh, feels it in her belly as Lucas whoops and hollers behind her. The wind is beating against her face, blowing her hair back. 

There’s an unmistakable grin on her face when she makes it to the bottom. It only takes Lucas another five seconds to join her at the bottom of the hill, and when he does, he’s a heaving mess. He’s crouched over, hands on his knees, as he tries to catch his breath. 

“I win,” Max gloats, beaming at him brightly.

He waves her off. “Yeah, yeah, I let you win,” Lucas reveals once his breathing has gone down to normal. 

Max crosses her arms across her chest in an intimidating stance. “Oh, you _let_ me?”

Lucas lasts a good three seconds before he cracks under the intensity of her glare. “Okay, okay, I surrender.” He raises his arms defensively. “You won.”

“That’s what I thought.” She turns on her heel to walk in the direction of where they left their bikes and her skateboard, and Lucas wastes no time in grabbing hold of her hand again. 

They walk in silence for a while until Lucas pipes up and asks, “Hey, do you really think Dustin is lying?”

Max shrugs, studying their joined hands. “I don’t know. It’s fun to tease him either way, though,” she adds, looking up to give her boyfriend a cheeky grin. He laughs and nods, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand. “But I must say, aside from you drinking all the water by yourself—”

“I offered you some!”

“—It was kinda nice. Watching the stars, I mean. With you.” Her voice trails off at the end on embarrassment, ducking her head so Lucas can’t see her blush. 

When he doesn’t say anything for a while, she musters up all the courage she can to peak up at him and finds that he’s already looking at her. The smile on his face is bright enough to rival that of the streetlight they’ve stopped under, and it causes something to flutter in her chest. 

“We should do that sometime. Stargaze. Together.” 

Max nods along, unable to fight the grin that works its way on her face. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

When they reach their things, Lucas lets go of her hand and rushes forward to what she assumes is his bike. She can’t help but feel a little disappointed at the loss of contact. Max finds him clutching her skateboard to his chest, bottom lip stuck out childishly.

“What are you doing?” she asks incredulously. She moves to pick his bike up from the ground for him, and watches him with her head tilted.

“Can I ride it?”

Max’s face blanks. “You’re kidding. I’d like for us _both_ to get there in one piece, thank you.”

Lucas puffs his chest out indignantly. “I’ve been practicing!”

“With _what_?”

Max looks at him expectantly waiting for an answer, to which he supplies after a moment’s hesitation. “Okay, so I taped a couple cans to the bottom of a piece of wood I found outside—”

“ _Oh my god_.”

“—but it’s practically the same thing!”

“In what universe!”

Lucas is still looking at her pouting with pleading eyes and she knows her resolve is going to crumble. “You’ll fall,” she worries, in a final attempt to change his mind.

“You’ll catch me,” he says shrugging easily. As though he’s never been more sure about anything.

Sighing heavily, Max gives in. She knows there’s no way she can say no to him, not when he’s looking at her like that. “Fine.” Lucas punches the air in excitement and runs into the middle of the road. He places the board down and tentatively steps onto it. 

“Just push yourself forward,” she instructs, standing off to the side on the sidewalk. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

“I’m pushing, I’m pushing,” Lucas grunts as he pushes himself off the road. When he gets the hang of it, he cheers loudly. “Whoo, I’ve got it!” he yells loudly and Max chuckles despite herself, smiling wide for no one in particular. The cool night air nips at her exposed skin, but she can’t help but feel impossibly warm being here with Lucas right now.

The dark skinned boy skates farther down the street and Max rolls his bike alongside her as she jogs to keep up with him. 

In his excitement, Lucas forgets that this is his first time skating and turns his head to look back at her. “Look, Iʼm Tony Hawk!” 

He leans a little too much to the left and veers in the direction of the sidewalk. “Watch out!” Max warns and Lucasʼ eyes widen as he looks out in front of him. 

“Aah!” he screams as he goes flying into a pile of trash bags sitting on the sidewalk. 

“Lucas!” Max drops the bike and rushes to his side. “Are you okay?” 

He grunts as he rolls over to lie on his back. “My knee,” he croaks out. A little dramatic, Max thinks, considering he landed on a relatively soft surface. “Can you kiss it better?” 

The redhead rolls her eyes and pushes herself off the ground. Lucas laughs loudly, evidently proud of himself. “You smell like garbage,” Max deadpans as she dusts herself off. He lets out an affronted “hey!” and picks himself up. “I told you you’d fall.”

Lucas pouts. “You didn’t catch me.” 

“You can’t skate,” she fires back. 

“You’ll teach me,” he says, again as though he was absolutely sure about it. Max supposes he has every right to be. 

“Yeah, maybe,” she says, going to fetch her skateboard from where it was lying on the edge of the street. “C’mon, let’s go home.” 

This time, as Lucas is picking his bike up holding both the handlebars so he can pull it along with him, Max can see the soft smile playing on his lips. 

“What are you smiling about, stalker?” 

“You said ‘home’.” 

“Yeah?” 

He sighs a little when he notices that she doesn’t understand what he’s getting at. “No, I mean, like, you didn’t say _my house_. You just said home.” Then, quieter, “Do you think of it as your home?” 

The thing is, Max doesnʼt have the best reference material for what ‘home’ should be. But Lucas is good, and safe, and the best thing she’s had in a long time. 

And she supposes that’s pretty similar. 

“Maybe,” is what she says. Nervously, head ducked and eyes trained on the road in front of her. “Just… with you, I guess.” She can feel her face flush and though she can’t see it, she knows she’s blushing furiously. 

“Aww,” her boyfriend croons, “you’re almost as red as your hair.” 

“Shut up,” Max mumbles without any real bite. 

Lucas shakes his head, smile stretched across his face. “No I won’t, because Max Mayfield _likes_ me!” 

Her face burns. “Oh my god.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m kind of irresistible.” 

Max rolls her eyes at that. “Oh, really?” 

Lucas nods enthusiastically, and Max just shakes her head in disbelief, a fond smile on her lips. “I like you too, by the way.” 

“I figured,” the redhead jokes, trying to add some levity to the heavy atmosphere around them.

“And you’re my home, too.” Lucasʼ smile is so bright, she swears it blinds her momentarily. 

Maxʼs heart swells with something she’s pretty sure is love and she nudges him with her shoulder. “I never said that.” 

Lucas waves her off. “Technicalities.” 

“Race you home?” she challenges, more comfortable with the prospect and watches as Lucas’ smile grows impossibly wider. 

“Prepare to _lose_ , Madmax!” 

That night, when she’s staring up at the ceiling on the spare mattress in Erica’s room, Max decides to create home for herself.

It’s when Lucas and her reach the garage, arguing over who made it there first; Mrs Sinclair greeting them both with a hug and a kiss on the cheek; Lucas holding her hand under the table as they all take turns recounting what they did that day. 

She doesn’t have that much knowledge to go off of when it comes to home.But what she does know is that whatever it is, Lucas is pretty damn close. (Don’t tell him she said that.)


End file.
